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Jay Ponteri

“What if a married writer wrote a detailed account of an affair and his pregnant wife found the manuscript? What if the affair were a blistering alternate reality, the other woman nothing more than a specter, an imagined body, a conglomeration of acquaintances met over a lifetime, affectionately named Frannie? And what if the husband refused to give up his ghost-lover, his ghost dates, his ghost sex? “By insisting on love, we spoil it…” writes Jack Gilbert in his poem “Tear It Down.” And yet, Gilbert adds, “We can break through marriage into marriage.””